


Capture Spiral

by QuillFeathers



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Childhood Friends, Choose Your Own Adventure, Fluff, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:29:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27461230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuillFeathers/pseuds/QuillFeathers
Summary: Felix has been tasked with making an appearance at Claude's big Halloween party, but that doesn't mean he's going to make an exception and go all-out on a costume. Maybe that unfestive take is what has landed him with a flat tire the night of the big event...--Bad luck? You, reader, will have to decide.(written for Dimilix Spiderweb: a collaborative Halloween event)
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18
Collections: Dimilix Spiderweb 2020





	Capture Spiral

**Author's Note:**

> Here begins the AO3 "version" of the Dimilix Spiderweb Halloween choose-your-own adventure! You can find the downloadable and browser versions [here](https://dimilixweb.itch.io/spiderweb2020). I had a ton of fun participating in this project, and it was awesome to see everyone's works come together. Make sure to give wonderful organizer [Eza](https://twitter.com/eznochi) and game coding/assembly wizard [Slip](https://twitter.com/slip_fe3h) lots of love too!
> 
> AND Please check out the absolutely awesome art (best GIF!) [Sirane](https://twitter.com/valeskyia/status/1323619679793934338/photo/1) produced for our segment collaboration!

It’s a dark and stormy night.

Well. It’s at least starting to get dark, the sun slipping below the horizon to paint the sky shadowed oranges and reds, and Felix’s mood is indeed currently stormy.

“Great,” he says to the right front tire of his car, which is clearly flat. Melted into the pavement. “Fucking great.”

A woman leading an astronaut down the sidewalk does not appreciate the profanity, frowning openly over her shoulder. Felix refrains from kicking the tire in favor of stomping back up to the steps of his apartment building. Leaning against the railing on the tiny porch, he pulls his phone out from the pocket of his black hoodie, typing out a quick message before shoving it away again.

He’s pretty sure he has a tire pressure gauge in the glovebox. Maybe it isn’t as flat as it looks, and he can make it to a gas station. Fill the stupid thing with air and hope it lasts several hours. Then again, he had just driven home from work three hours ago. Not exactly the rate of a slow leak.

Felix glares at the tire again. Nothing like some bad luck on Halloween.

From within his pocket, his phone vibrates twice in quick succession.

Felix isn’t even exactly thrilled to be going to a big Halloween party. He’d much rather just hang out at someone’s place in a small group, or just hand out candy at Mercedes’ house like they did last year.

_bvvvvrrrrr_

Not going was still an option, but then he would miss out on seeing the huge, old estate that von Riegan had not shut up about for the last two months.

A gaggle of kids passes in front of the apartment building, the front two jumping over sidewalk cracks. The real, not stormy-Felix weather is ideal for Halloween night. Crisp, but not cold enough to pull out an early heavy winter coat, with few clouds and a full moon to glow above trick-or-treaters.

The phone vibrates a fourth time just as Felix’s fingers close around it.

**Annette** : not a lot of room in the car with all the baking Mercedes & Dedue did for the  
party, ask Dimitri? 

**Sylvain** : sorry running late

**Ingrid** : To be clear, Sylvain is running us late. But we can get you if Dimitri can’t.

**Ashe** : coming from the opposite direction. Dimitri?

**Dimitri** : Of course! Leaving now, I’ll be there shortly.

Felix frowns as Dimitri’s reply lights up the just-dimming screen. He’s fairly certain no one was asked to bring anything besides themselves in a costume to the house, and unless Ashe was coming straight from work, he would pass right by Felix’s exit.

Typing out a thanks, Felix turns his attention back to the street. There are more groups of kids across the road, where there are more houses. It's nice out, and it won't take Dimitri very long to arrive, so he makes a game of looking for familiar costumes. Some classics defy the passing of time, especially when it came to younger kids: crayons, cowboys, animals, ninjas. Generics.  
Felix smiles to himself when a handful of safari animals run up to a house, an image of a much younger, much smaller Dimitri dressed as a lion popping into his head. Felix can't remember what he was that year for Halloween off the top of his head, but he does remember holding onto the little tufted tail attached to his closest friend.

“Felix!”

A mostly-familiar silhouette is waving from the curb a couple of cars behind Felix’s own. He can pick out Dimitri's voice in a loud room easily, but seeing him with a hat on is unusual.

Its purpose is revealed when he gets closer to the car.

“Finally caved to Sylvain's nagging and went for pirate?” Felix asks when the passenger door is closed behind him.

“A last-minute choice.” Dimitri can't hold back a small smile, reaching to shift back to Drive before pausing, looking Felix over. “For a moment I thought you were going to see if Claude's threat of making anyone not in costume wear a clown nose was real.”

“I'd like to see him try.” Felix reaches up to feel the simple black and white-centered ears perched on his head. “And you can't judge,” he adds, almost reaching out to poke Dimitri's shoulder when Dimitri’s smile starts to widen. “That hat of yours is just as generic as my headband.”

Dimitri’s lips tilt further upwards anyway, though he doesn't take his eyes off the road, gesturing behind him instead. “Back seat.”

Felix looks. Almost laughs, too, at the little goddamn stuffed red parrot buckled into the back seat.

“It was this or a plaid flannel and a werewolf mask,” Dimitri says.

“Hmph. Lucky for you, I decided to save the plastic vampire teeth for next year.”

That finally gets a real laugh out of Dimitri, which makes Felix turn away again to look out the window, hiding his own smirk.

“Perhaps I will match your single-accessory theme next year then. I could make my eyepatch look cybertronic.”

“We are not matching costumes in any way shape or form, ever again,” Felix glares.

The smiling doesn't stop. “We had fun that year.”

Being competitive yourself while having a bunch of competitive friends is sometimes a problem. Drawing costumes out of a hat consisting of everyone's supposed good ideas was mild, until it had been revealed that Annette and Marianne had both submitted 'penguin'.

“I guess,” Felix huffs again, watching headlights from other cars zip by on the freeway. When he catches Dimitri glancing at him almost sheepishly in the window’s reflection, he relaxes back into his seat. It wasn’t a lie, after all, even if he and Dimitri had spent that Halloween in matching penguin costumes. “Thanks for picking me up.”

“No problem at all.”

The rest of the drive passes mostly in comfortable silence. The radio’s thrumming of silly songs like “Monster Mash” is interrupted intermittently by Dimitri’s phone droning out directions and Dimitri himself suggesting increasingly more involved costume ideas. Felix shoots every one of them down in one sentence or less, but he is in a decidedly better mood when they get off the freeway a handful of exits later.

They immediately take a right down a road with old homes tucked into trees behind gated drives, but a glance down at their glowing map indicates that they still have a couple more miles to go. When the phone does declare they’ve arrived there is no gate, but the road narrows as if there should be. Felix spots a man-made pond with some sort of grounds or storage building and what may be or may not be a tiny fenced-in cemetery, and then the trees suddenly open to a huge circle drive. Yellowed brick is illuminated through curved, fancy window panes, the bottom floor all aglow. Two rounded dark steeples appear to rise above the second floor of the manor, but it’s too dark behind the house’s silhouette to immediately tell whether or not there’s a third level too.

“Why doesn’t Claude live here again?” Felix asks, leaning forward slightly to peer at a lantern-lit gazebo already filled with people.

Dimitri’s focused on finding a spot to park. “He wants to, someday. He said it’s been empty since his great-great-grandfather moved to the city. He was superstitious.”

“Superstitious,” Felix repeats, vaguely remembering talk of family squabbles and suspicious deaths.

Dimitri shrugs. “I wouldn’t want to live in a big, empty old house with that kind of history either.”

When they get out of the car no one pays the two of them any mind, not even when Dimitri gives a quiet shout of realization and backtracks to grab the parrot plush. Felix smothers a smile as Dimitri gently presses the birds’ little velcroed feet to his shoulder. There’s no denying that he put a little more effort into the whole costume thing, but he still looks ridiculous in a plain white t-shirt. Although, he probably knows the parrot will give him bonus points.

Neither of them is exactly good at mingling with strangers, so Felix heads straight to the front door when he doesn’t immediately recognize anyone. If Mercedes and Dedue really did bake they’d have stopped in the kitchen first, and even that aside, wherever the food is is likely where they’d find their friends.

They don’t even make it to the kitchen. Felix sees the doorway off to the left further down the entry hall that probably leads to it, but Annette comes bounding down from halfway up the curving staircase on the right side of the room as soon as he and Dimitri walk through the front door. The banister is covered in fake spiderwebs, and a large ghost hangs from the landing above. Like it had appeared from outside, the rooms upstairs are all dark, but there are portraits on the wall behind the ghost and two more doorways leading further in. Felix’s eyes alight on a pair of classically-crossed swords above the one at the end of the landing, below a map of somewhere he can’t quite make out.

He’d have to get Claude to show him the rest of the house.

Dimitri bumps into his back when Felix stops short, and Annette takes the opportunity to cling to Felix’s elbows, peering at him and Dimitri both at arms’ length. Scrutinizing.

“Really, Felix? Just a headband?”

He almost feels guilty, because Annette is all done up in full witch’s garb, right down to little potion bottles hanging from the belt around her waist.

“I bet there’s someone here who just has a sheet thrown over their head,” he tries for distraction, but another figure appears at the end of the short hallway, leaning out from the door of the hypothetical kitchen. It’s Claude, hair slicked back and wearing some fancy suit that Felix can’t even name all the pieces of.

“Felix!” He grins, except it’s a shit-eating one that Felix knows means trouble. “And pirate Dimitri. Not very original, buddy.”

“You’re in a suit. You have way too many suits, that’s cheating.” Felix deadpans, Dimitri chuckling behind him.

Claude continues grinning. “My house, my rules. Besides, I’m hosting. Get it? I’ll just let my sidekick there handle you two. Mercedes says no food until you’re both acceptably dressed! You’re early, so there’s plenty of options.”

“Options?” Dimitri asks.

“I highly doubt Mercedes said that,” Felix says, moving to step forward.

“This way,” Annette chirps, and tugs Felix to the right instead.

There’s a shut door at the foot of the staircase, and Annette throws it wide with a wave. She flips the light on only after Dimitri follows Felix inside, encouraged to go before Annette by more enthusiastic waving.

The room’s contents are far worse than the clown nose threat. It feels like they’ve walked into one of those Halloween stores that pop up in empty buildings every fall. A very disorganized one. Racks of clothes, everything from pants to dresses on one wall and another littered with masks and hats. There’s a bin with a wizard staff sticking out of it next to an even more suspicious one that looks to be stuffed with wigs. Across from them, a curtain blocks off one corner of the room into its own little square, presumably hiding a mirror.

The door clicks shut behind Dimitri. There’s a distinct thump against it from the other side.

“We could knock you right off the door, Annette,” Felix says loudly.

“Feliiiiix,” muffled.

“This is ridiculous,” he huffs, stepping further in. “Does Claude’s family own a costume company too?”

But Dimitri for some reason has already gravitated to the racks of clothes. “Maybe we should have seen this coming, the way they all tell us to try harder every year.”

Felix rolls his eyes, turning to face Dimitri again. “Your getup is fine.”

Dimitri shrugs. “Do you think they’ll let us out if I just change my shirt then?” He asks, pointing at a rack hung with various tops.

“Well I’m not putting on an actual cat suit.”

“I’m sure there’s a tail somewhere in here.”

“No.” Felix crosses his arms.

But there’s so much stuff in the room he can’t help but look around. Besides, otherwise he’d just be left awkwardly staring at Dimitri. If Dimitri’s pirate outfit had been almost acceptable, then there had to be something simple in here that would pass Annette’s criteria…

[Time to be a vampire after all.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27499840) (Gen/Fluff Pathway)  
**OR**  
[Just grab a handful of stuff, he can figure it out while changing.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27473431) (Horror Pathway)  
**OR**  
[Upgrade the cat costume.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27476968#main) (NSFW Pathway)

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thank you for reading!
> 
> twitter-bird: [@o3QuillFeathers](https://twitter.com/o3QuillFeathers)


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